E-mail:
the state dept. memo ids her as `valerie wilson’ not `valerie plame.’ seems to me that the source came from elsewhere.
ME: Yeah, that’s definitely a wrinkle. But given that Novak was known for talking to Powell all the time, I still think it was Powell or someone around him. Novak was having, as he put it in a column, “a long conversation with a senior administration official,” and that official mentioned the Wilson-wife connection as an aside, not to smear Wilson or anything. Novak says it “was an offhand revelation from this official.” Which fits, since the State department AGREED with Wilson on the Niger question. Why would it want to discredit him? And Novak’s initial column reflects that view—it is pro-Wilson, not anti-. I’m guessing that the bulk of Novak’s talk with his senior official was about the merits of the Niger business and how supposedly crazy and dishonest the administration’s “neo-cons” are.